Acknowledgments - A Dream of Waking Life

Thank you to all my family, friends, and fans for your love and support. To my closest friends, thank you for your patience and acceptance of my mind.

Special thanks:

To Jesse, for pushing me to continue my writing and take it to the next level. I genuinely appreciate your honesty and your critiques of my work. We go so far back that it precedes the beginning of memory. You’ve always been a part of my life, bro, and you always will.

To Rachel, for your support and incredibly deep understanding of me. You have provided incredible comfort and helped me attain deep levels of acceptance for myself. I will always be grateful to you.

To Brad, the Dungeon Master of the greatest DnD campaign anyone has ever experienced. You were the first official beta reader to finish the book, and your feedback gave me a ton of confidence to share this story with others.

To Marcin, for encouraging me and pushing me to finish this story and to give the whole of myself to it even when it meant a great deal of confusion and torment for me. You are my brother, and I know with complete and utter certainty that I can always count on you.

To Melissa, for your invaluable edits, of course, but also for your understanding of the overall vision I was going for with this piece. Your changes to the language of my story were expert and thorough. Nichole and I built a great house, but you gave every square inch of it the deep clean it needed. Your editing career will have no limits. You are the best of the best. (Secret handshake).

To Nichole, for always being by my side, especially when it comes to my writing. We both know the truth is that my stories wouldn’t be worth half as much as they are without your guidance and vision. You are basically coauthor of my stories – that’s the way I see it. Especially when it comes to the characters. I have evolved and grown into the author I am today specifically and very directly because of you. You have my eternal gratitude. And though I’m sorry the story didn’t end exactly as you and I would have liked, it did end exactly as it needed to.

To Mom, for fostering my passions and for always encouraging me to write. I can’t believe how many hours and days you spent listening to me tell the most random and bizarre stories as a kid. And the whole time, you would just smile and encourage my creativity. Life was not easy for us, Mom, but you made it seem easy. You always made life as wonderful an experience as possible for a very confused and angry and wild and pained child. And now, seeing you with Leif, my son, I understand why there is so much joy deep down inside me that I can turn to whenever the darkness in my mind closes in and threatens to consume me. You gave me that foundation of joy. I will have that until the day I die. And maybe beyond. Who knows, right? The universe and love are capable of anything.

To Claire, truly my other half. I cannot imagine my life without you. I don’t want to. I was searching for you for years before I met you. We started practically living with each other within weeks of me asking you out, and 13 years later, I still get excited each day that you love me and want me and thrive with me. You are my clarity. You are my rock. And I am yours. We have overcome every obstacle. We are meant for one another. We are truly yin and yang. I’m grateful I found you all those years ago and convinced you to come back to my place with my grandma’s frozen homemade spaghetti sauce. You are my inspiration, and you never cease in your support and belief in me. And as for this story, you were there when I first started planning this story as we hiked random trails in New Zealand over a decade ago. You were there when I gave up writing it. You were there when I started again. And you were there for the countless other times I gave up. You were there for the years of piecing it together. And you were there to see its end. This story would not exist without you by my side. I would not exist without you. I love you forever and a day.